


Scattered

by onward_came_the_meteors



Series: October 2020 Prompts [8]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Gen, Hurt, One Shot, POV Third Person, Post-Avengers (2012), Team Dynamics, kind of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:41:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26894629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onward_came_the_meteors/pseuds/onward_came_the_meteors
Summary: The Avengers wake up alone.
Series: October 2020 Prompts [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947679
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	Scattered

**Author's Note:**

> Day 8, for the prompt "abandoned"

Steve wasn’t used to being the one who woke up unconscious after a fight.

Sure, it had happened once or twice, but it was much more common to have to track down Clint, who did so many reckless stunts that  _ some  _ of them, statistically, had to end with him taking a tumble off a building; or Natasha, whose up-close-and-personal methods of fighting meant she was just that more likely to get knocked on the head once in a while; or Thor, who might have been a god (Steve was still a skeptic on that front) but since he was in the sky, was usually one of the easiest targets; or Tony, who was an easy target in the sky as  _ well  _ as overly enthusiastic about reckless stunts, and consequently had ended up unconscious in the suit enough times that JARVIS had now written a new protocol for it; or Bruce, because… well, it was practically in his job description.

But not Steve. Steve always came out of the fight standing as tall as when he’d walked in; yeah, maybe he’d have a few scrapes and bruises, but they’d heal in no time, and anyway all that mattered was that he got back up, because that was what Captain America did.

And it was what Steve Rogers did when he opened his eyes in the middle of a street that was looking rather worse for wear after what he could only assume had been a fight of Avengers-level proportions. He couldn’t even remember what it was they’d been fighting. But thinking about it made his head hurt, so he decided to focus on standing up.

Standing up was… hard.

Steve abandoned his original plan of jumping instantly to his feet after every muscle in his body started screaming at him the moment he pushed himself onto his hands and knees, and instead reached out and grabbed the nearest solid object—the armrest of a bench that had miraculously survived whatever had gone down here—and hauled himself upright. It was a slow, painful process, and even once he was standing up, he didn’t entirely trust himself to let go of the bench.

The pavement swam in front of his eyes, and he blinked hard. He couldn’t afford to pass out again, not when the rest of the team wasn’t even—

_ Wait. The team. _

Steve looked around, shielding his eyes from the harsh sunlight with his free hand, but there was no sign of the Avengers—most of whom weren’t exactly inconspicuous—anywhere on the all-but-demolished street. That was… worrying. Surely they wouldn’t have left him there after the battle—not even Tony—not unless… 

_ Oh god. Please let them be okay. _

Steve was so caught up in his new mental images of what exactly could happen to someone after a battle as intense as the one they had just had that he forgot that he wasn’t entirely okay himself, and went to step away from the bench.

Everything tilted alarmingly, and Steve was floating through the void of time and space before something solid and hard slammed into his shoulder.

He opened his eyes—when had he closed them again?—to find that he was now leaning heavily against somebody’s parked car because his legs had suddenly decided to stop supporting his weight. It almost felt like how it had been before the serum, only now with more distance to fall before he’d hit the ground. 

But he wasn’t going to do that, because he had to go find the others and make sure they were okay; he had to stay on his feet and he had to keep his eyes open and everything  _ really  _ needed to stop spinning—

An annoyed voice broke the haziness that had settled around his head. “Hey! That’s my car!”

Steve glanced up without moving any other part of his body to see a man in a blue jacket heading toward him. “Sorry.” That was all he managed to get out before the world tilted yet again and he had to pull in a steadying breath.

The man was shaking his head, his gaze flashing up at Steve and then down to the ground as he picked his way through the rubble with such focused intensity that it was a few seconds before it clicked. The man stopped in his tracks.

“Wait—you’re Captain America!” The annoyance disappeared from his face, to be replaced with what could only be described as awe. Steve almost wished it hadn’t.

He raised one shoulder in a kind of shrug, wincing as the motion pulled at a sore muscle. He seemed to have a lot of those; that probably explained the aching whenever he drew in a breath.

The man was still talking to him, his hands gesturing as though discussing the fight, the destruction, the Avengers—Steve didn’t even know what all else, because the sound had faded to a faint buzzing over his own heartbeat in his ears. His gaze swept exhaustedly around the street again, and this time he spotted something bright scattered on the opposite sidewalk.

He was moving before he was aware of it, and maybe that was a good thing, because his numb brain didn’t pick up on the fact that his legs were throbbing with pain until he was already across the street.

The shield was lying next to an upended square of cracked sidewalk, the sunlight reflecting off the star in its center through motes of dust that still hung in the air. Steve leaned down as far as he dared—still almost too far, since he felt another wave of dizziness threatening to sink him onto the pavement—and scooped it up.

He turned around and stared up the street, toward the sun that was glowing gold low in the sky, and began the slow trek forward. He had to find his team.

* * *

When Natasha opened her eyes, she wasn’t so sure she had.

Everything was still just as pitch-dark as when they had been shut, and it took her a moment before she spotted a few weak bars of light trickling in from… was that a grate? On the ceiling?

Natasha reached up a hand to rub at her eyes, but when she let it drop back down, there was a  _ splash _ and the jolt of cold wetness snapped her out of the lingering haze.

She was curled on her side on the floor of what she’d  _ assumed  _ was a basement, or the inside of whatever warehouse building she’d crashed through during the fight with—what  _ had  _ they been fighting, anyway?—but the puddle she was practically sitting in, not to mention the dank, rotting-type smell that hung over everything, was giving her a bad feeling.

She shook the droplets off her hand—not that it would do much good, since she could feel the entire side of her suit getting damp—and struggled to sit up, feeling like Thor’s hammer was sitting on her chest. She squinted in the dim light.

There it was, stamped on the brick wall that curved up around her:  _ “NYC Sewer—”  _ Then some smaller words that were mostly rubbed off with moisture, probably the name of whatever department had stuck that on there. But that didn’t really matter anyway—all that mattered was that she had just lost the bet she’d made with Clint over which of them would be the first to get stuck in the sewera. They’d made the bet when Avengers Tower had become a thing and they were set to move in, and Natasha had been going strong up until now—god, he would never let her hear the end of it.

(Getting stuck in the sewer system of a major city was surprisingly commonplace at S.H.I.E.L.D.; there was a special folder of paperwork for it. The  _ worst  _ time had definitely been their last joint mission before Clint was stationed in New Mexico and she was sent to pose as Natalie Rushman, when it had taken twelve showers before she really felt clean again, but that was a long story, and one she didn’t have the clearance to talk about)

It seemed quiet enough up outside—nothing like she’d expect if the battle was still going on, which was a relief since she wasn’t sure how long she was going to stay conscious. She listened for another moment. Nope. No explosions, crashes, repulsor noises, thunder, lightning, or buildings groaning under the weight of a giant green monster.

Natasha touched her ear, wondering if by some miracle her coms were still functional, but they must’ve gotten knocked out at some point—either when she was fighting or when she was doing whatever it was that had landed her down here. She would’ve tried to look around for them, but if they had fallen out down here, they were probably waterlogged and useless by now.

“At least it’ll give Stark something to do,” she muttered to herself, out loud because the sewer was empty and she needed to clear her head. Unfortunately, this caused her to start coughing, and once she started, it refused to stop.

Natasha wanted to curl back into a ball, but memories from her training leaked into her brain and she sat as straight as she could, trying to open her airway.

Finally, she managed to draw in a ragged breath—after she’d coughed up what felt like half the sewer water in New York, of course, and this was going to be a fun conversation once she got back to S.H.I.E.L.D. medical—

“Ack.” She let her head fall back against the brick. Something dripped down into the neck of her suit and she hastily pulled it away again.

One thing was for sure: she couldn’t stay down here forever. The team probably didn’t even have her location if her coms were out, and unless they’d seen her fall down here, this wouldn’t be anywhere on the list of places to look.

When she stood up, she imagined she could still feel water sloshing around in her lungs ( _ Please—let me be imagining things _ ). Carefully, she stepped around the huge sunken puddle and tilted her head upward at the grate a few feet above.

At least, it  _ looked  _ like a few feet from the ground, but as she started to climb up with shaking arms and breaths that were a little too uneven, it might as well have been five hundred.

Natasha pushed open the grate and hauled herself up onto the street.

* * *

Everything was ringing.

Ringing, and dark, and… was that something burning?

Clint sniffed. Yeah, something was definitely burning.

He didn’t feel unusually warm, though—actually, wind was blowing in his face that was absolutely freezing, but at least it dried off some of the after-battle sweat—so if anything was on fire, it was in all likelihood far away enough that he didn’t have to worry about it. Yet.

Opening his eyes would probably be a better way to determine that, though.

Unfortunately, his eyes really, really, did not want to open.

Clint patted his hands around his face for a moment before he located said eyes and pried them open with his fingers. He tried to touch the actual eyeball as little as he could, since he could feel dirt and gunk and who knew what else plastered over his hands. This was also how he determined that Natasha was not with him, because if she was, she’d be slapping him right about now because “ _ if you poke your eyes out, your code name is going to sound ridiculous. And they’d probably assign me some trainee sniper as my backup to replace you. _ ” It was good to know she cared.

He finally blinked without his eyes immediately sliding shut and took in his surroundings. Not surprisingly, he seemed to be on a roof. A roof on a building in New York City, which was also not surprising, since that was where he lived. Sort of. Laura and the kids had shared custody. S.H.I.E.L.D. did too, kinda… not really anymore.

Clint pushed up to his elbows and peeked over the edge, where far below (he shouldn’t think about how far, not when he was as dizzy as he was) half the street was ripped up and several buildings bore the marks of  _ something _ (Aliens? Robots? Alien robots?) smashing into them very hard. Several cars were swerved out of the way and parked in haphazard directions around the curb, and a few people were starting to emerge, ant-like, from the buildings they’d taken shelter in.

Rush-hour traffic had been stopped, so whatever had happened was definitely an Avengers-level threat.

His foot kicked something that skittered aside, and he rolled around to find his bow lying a few feet out of reach. He hooked his foot underneath and flipped it up, stretching a hand out to catch it before it tumbled off the edge of the roof.

“Oh yeah,” he said out loud, and that was when he realized his hearing aids weren’t working.

Instinctively, he brushed his free hand toward his ears, like tapping on them repeatedly would make them work (It did not, as many experiences of having them suddenly die on him during a mission would attest). They were still there, just dead. Meaning the ringing in his ears was a product of his headache and not something on the roof, which… hmm. That was not comforting.

“Aw, hearing aids, no.” Clint slid them out and stared at them for another moment before sticking them in his pocket and standing up.

Which, as it turned out, was a  _ tremendously  _ bad idea.

Clint swayed and grabbed at air, but a split second later had slammed chest-first onto the hard roof again.

“Ow,” he groaned. 

He lifted his head to the empty blue sky. No Thor, no Iron Man, no quinjet… and he didn’t really feel like jumping up and down and waving his arms anyway. 

Well… this building had to have a fire escape.

If not, Clint would need to get creative.

* * *

Bruce knew he and the Hulk had some issues to work out.

But really… dropping him in a pile of garbage was a bit much.

The smell was what woke him up—otherwise he would’ve been happy to stay unconscious. Every part of his body had just been stretched and pulled apart and turned inside out, and then unceremoniously dumped from a great height and into this crater of wreckage. He’d shrunk back to human form, but apparently his limbs had forgotten that they didn’t still weigh a hundred pounds each. 

It took a monumental effort for him to lift his head, and as soon as he did, he had to drop it back down again. Something crunched behind him, and he winced. Never had he wanted so badly to move only to find himself unable to.

At least he wasn’t on the run anymore. Back then, he’d be up and moving as soon as the green had faded from his skin, running as fast as he could even with his senses burning and his skin on fire, because there just wasn’t time to waste. Most of the time the military would be on top of him, having been alerted as soon as a local breathed something about “large, green, and angry” in the area. He’d go until he couldn’t anymore, until he found the closest approximation of a hiding place and gave out.

Now that he was with the Avengers, that he was no longer a fugitive (fugitive was one of the nicer words people like S.H.I.E.L.D. had used when talking to him, but it wasn’t what was written in his file), and that he had a billionaire teammate to keep the military off his back (the living legend, infamous superspy, and Norse god teammates didn’t hurt either), he didn’t have to scramble to the nearest international border as soon as he woke up anymore. It made a nice change, to be honest. Bruce wouldn’t complain.

The location could be better, yeah, but it definitely could’ve been worse.

Bruce shifted his arm, trying to get it out from where it was half-trapped underneath some fallen bricks. The movement jostled some of the debris on top of him, and he felt a sudden sharp pain dig into his thigh.

“Did you break a window?” he mumbled, blinking with sticky eyes up at the wall of the building behind him. He couldn’t tell—his glasses never survived the transformations, but it was also partially the fact that his surroundings seemed to be shaking.

No, wait. That was him.

The Hulk didn’t answer, but Bruce thought he felt a grumbling in the back of his head and sighed. With his luck, there would be broken glass somewhere in here, although maybe that was insignificant considering what else was probably there. Just a pile of garbage and chunks of building and one Bruce Banner, all mixed together in a debris smoothie and spilled out in this alley.

His second attempt at getting up lasted an entire five seconds before he finally managed to push himself up into a sitting position, curling over so that his head rested on his knees. He wrapped his arms around his legs and pulled them in close to his chest—the wind was squeezing its way between the buildings and he couldn’t help shivering.

Bruce let out a shuddering breath into his chest and waited for everything to stop spinning around and around. His vision had that weird fuzziness at the edges now, like a staticking TV. That probably wasn’t good, but it would go away as soon as he got back to the Tower and passed out on his bed for the next sixteen hours—

_ Oh. That’s what I forgot. _

The team didn’t know where he was. This, he knew with one hundred percent certainty, because if any of them had seen even the slightest hint of the Hulk charging off and throwing himself off the side of a building, he would be waking up surrounded by chattering and bickering and Clint pointing out how “hey, he’s back!” and Natasha filling him in about the fight and Steve doing his respectful look-away and Thor animatedly adding to Natasha’s retelling and Tony leaning right over him to see if he could spot any leftover green in his eyes—hell, he’d probably be waking up in Tony or Thor’s arms and flying back to the Tower by now.

So, no: none of them knew where he was. Meaning if he wanted to get back to the Tower, he had to get up and find them. Otherwise, his only option was to wait here until JARVIS scanned the whole city for his gamma signature, and he was already freezing enough.

Slowly, slowly, slowly—he had to go slowly because everything still felt so  _ weird  _ and he wasn’t completely positive that he wasn’t about to throw up—Bruce stood up. 

The alley flipped upside down and sideways for a moment, and he had to shut his eyes, but then everything settled, and he began his walk back.

The sun was behind him as he staggered out of the alley, and his shadow on the sidewalk stretched out in front.

* * *

Thor was unconscious one moment.

The next, his eyes had flashed open and he was on his feet, his fist already closing tight around Mjolnir as he stared wildly in every direction.

Lightning flickered around the hammer’s handle as his mind tried to catch itself up on the events of the day. There had been a fight—that’s what was standing out the most. There had been an attack and they had been fighting and  _ was there still a fight going on where was it— _

Thor realized he was breathing heavily and stopped, slowly lowering Mjolnir but still keeping a tight grip. There wasn’t any imminent danger, not that he could see. If there had indeed been a fight (he was convinced there had to have been a fight, what else could tear up the streets and upend cars and smash shop windows like that), it had either ended or it had moved to another part of town, leaving Thor himself behind.

And whatever they had been fighting, it had been powerful enough to knock him unconscious, which hadn’t happened since… well, since his fight with the Destroyer in New Mexico. It took a lot for something to get the better of him like that, and he had been confident that nothing on this planet was quite of that caliber.

Apparently there was a first time for everything. Thor was glad he was alone—Stark would never let him hear the end of it.

Except… he wasn’t alone. Now that the initial adrenaline had cleared from his system—the lightning sparked out as well, which was a relief because the inside of his mouth was starting to taste like burning—he was able to take a clearer look around, and he realized where exactly he’d passed out.

He was standing in the center of a plaza, the pavement under his feet cracked from the impact of a thunder god plummeting out of the sky (That hurt to think about). The sidewalks around him were lined with what looked like restaurants and small stores, some of them with broken windows or wreckage blocking the door. One of the signs hung off a pole at a twisted angle, only a single hook left to hold it up as it wobbled in the wind. An outdoor table was collapsed in front of a doorway, its jaunty red umbrella tipping to one side.

And people were gathered there, too. Peering through the windows and the barricades they’d created out of fallen street signs and benches. Standing up from behind the knocked-over tables. Emerging from inside the stores and restaurants.

Thor suddenly felt too large for the street he stood on, and he tucked his shoulders in beneath his cape. A few of the onlookers jumped at his movement, and he couldn’t really blame them. How must he look, standing there with that wild look in his eyes and the power of Asgard in his hands? He had the uncomfortable feeling that there was blood on him too, somewhere—who it belonged to, he had no idea; but he couldn’t rule out himself—but wiping it off would only draw more attention to it.

“Hello,” he finally said, because everyone was  _ staring  _ at him and could they please stop. “Um—there’s nothing to worry about. The Avengers have taken care of the threat.”

He wasn’t his brother, but his lie must have worked a tiny bit: a couple of the people relaxed.

“Are you the one from space?” one of them finally asked—a woman in a striped sweater who had probably been having lunch when the city had gone under attack. “What happened here?”

“Yes,” Thor said, deciding to ignore the second question. He wondered if he was going to pass out again. That would be embarrassing. “Have any of you happened to see the other Avengers, by any chance?”

A series of head shakes. He might really pass out again.

Then, cautiously, a younger girl spoke up. “I think—I think I saw Iron Man? Like, over that way—” She pointed, and Thor followed her gaze to where the plaza connected with one of the main streets. “I think I saw him falling, maybe. But I’m not sure, I could be wrong.”

“I hope by the Nine Realms you aren’t,” Thor said under his breath, and nodded as politely as he could at the crowd before turning away and limping (why was he  _ limping _ , what had happened to make him feel so awful) down the street.

The wind coming in from the west was cold and biting against his skin, but he pulled the edges of his cloak tighter around himself and kept forward. Every time his foot caught on a crack or a chunk of rubble, he almost pitched onto his face, forcing himself to keep moving even as it was starting to feel mechanical.

_ I have to find the rest of the team, _ Thor kept reminding himself.  _ Just far enough to find the rest of the team. _

_ And then I can figure out what the hell happened here. _

* * *

Tony jolted awake with a gasp.

He couldn’t breathe. He was stuck inside of something and it was pressing very very close and he couldn’t see and he couldn’t  _ breathe— _

The helmet flipped open and Tony dragged in a breath of grateful air. For a moment he just sat there and let himself breathe, the coolness of it feeling amazing against his sweaty face. Even if this was New York City air and it was also full of dust and  _ was that smoke _ ?

The details didn’t come rushing back to him all at once; they came in little blinks and bursts like data on a screen. He was in the suit. And he was in the suit  _ outside _ , which almost entirely ruled out the possibility of this being a lab experiment gone wrong (Not that ending up unconscious really warranted the label of  _ gone wrong _ —that was saved for the really massive fuck-ups, the ones that involved palladium and space cubes and gamma rays). 

He was also lying on his back in the middle of the street, so there was that, too. How had he not gotten run over yet?

Tony lifted his head to maybe get a glimpse of the cars he was sure were about to slam full speed into the suit, but that was not at all the scene that lay before him. 

_ Oh. Oh, okay. We had a mission. _

_ S.H.I.E.L.D. had a problem they couldn’t handle themselves, Cap called us to assemble, we suited up, and… _

That was about where his memory refused to help him. He’d have to ask Steve or Natasha or someone later. Actually, he was kinda surprised that they weren’t already here. It seemed to be the trend to gather around a fallen teammate until they returned to the world of the living.

Now, though, Tony was completely alone. At least that he could see, anyway. He didn’t trust Barton not to pop out of a mailbox or something.

“Marco?” he called out, wincing at how rough his voice sounded. “Polo,” he answered himself a few seconds later, and it was a mark of how exhausted he was that he actually started giggling silently.

“No, sir, I’m afraid that is incorrect.”

Tony grinned, his shoulders sinking a little with relief. “JARVIS!” Oh, his head was going to split open. From the sheer friction of his brain pulsing against the inside of his skull, if nothing else—his heartbeat had migrated upward.

“Yes.” The AI paused. “Are you feeling all right, sir?”

“‘Course I am.” The grin slipped off Tony’s face suddenly, and he amended his statement. “Actually, I’m probably going to hurl. But how about I don’t do that, because I’m still in the suit, and that’s never a—”

He broke off and just barely managed to eject himself from the suit and roll over onto the pavement before he threw up. This did nothing to lessen the pounding in his head—now his stomach and throat just hurt, too, a burning icky feeling stuck to the inside of his skin.

“Peachy,” he muttered. A swallow worked its way through the back of his throat. “JARVIS? Help,” he started, but that was all he had time to say before he was retching again.

JARVIS waited for him to finish before speaking. “If I may, sir, you did hit your head rather hard during the battle when you—”

“Details,” Tony groaned. “It’s always about the details. You’ve gotta ask yourself these things sometimes: do they really matter?”

“I would say so, sir.”

“Well, who asked your opinion—” Tony coughed and waited for a nervous moment. When it seemed apparent that nothing else was coming back up, he sighed and ran a hand through the damp hair sticking to his forehead. “Man, that’s a headache. J, where’s the rest of the team?”

“According to the city layout, you are currently at East—”

“No, the _ team _ , not me. I know where I am. Well, not physically, but I do know emotionally. Spiritually.” Tony coughed again and made a face. “Where’s the team?”

“Perhaps you should sit up.”

“What the hell—” Tony cut himself off and propped his elbows underneath him. “Fine. If I pass out again, get the armor on me so I don’t become roadkill.”

He didn’t wait for JARVIS’s response before he was struggling to get up, wavy lines wiggling across his vision and the thud-thud-thud in his head arcing to a painful height. His arms shuddered underneath him, but soon enough he was in a sitting position and staring around at the street like he was Captain America out of the ice.

It didn’t take long for him to spot them. They were everywhere, staggering in from various directions, each of them looking surprised to see the other five.

Thor was first, his cape wrapped around him like a blanket and one of his legs dragging behind him—ooh, that was a nasty cut, that explained why. Mjolnir hung from his belt as gleaming and smooth as ever, but there was a dent in his chestplate and a long scratch down the side of his face. The wind was blowing his hair around, but he didn’t even bother trying to pull it back—he looked a little busy trying not to pass out where he stood.

Next was Bruce, who—and there was no nice way to say this—looked dead on his feet. He had obviously just transformed back, his hair a wild mess and his face streaked with grime and sweat, his whole body shaking ever so slightly like it was still adjusting to the smaller form. An obviously picked-up jacket and pants rested loosely over him, and his eyes were huge and ringed with shadows as he offered an attempt at a smile.

Clint was still walking forward, even after he no longer needed to be, drifting from side to side like even he didn’t know what direction to turn in. He was swaying badly and his eyes couldn’t seem to rest on anything, taking in Tony on the ground and the car flipped upside down across the street and the stop sign bent in half on the corner within the space of a second. As always, bruises dotted his body like freckles, and there was one particularly dark one above his elbow that had to hurt with the way he was swinging his bow back and forth.

Then came Natasha, who for whatever reason was dripping wet, her feet making squishing sounds against the pavement as she stumbled every step forward. Her breathing sounded awful, ragged and shallow, and every few seconds she would burst out with coughing that she tried to hide in her arm. She was also holding one wrist at an odd angle, but every time she caught one of them staring at it, she hid it behind her back. To top it off, her nose had begun to bleed.

And last of all was Steve, who looked like he had quite literally dragged himself all the way here—a far cry from the usual spirited energy of the man who would run marathons and spar with the Black Widow for fun—and that it was taking every effort for him not to face-plant in the middle of the road. His shield dangled loosely from one hand, and his helmet was missing, leaving the sweat and dirt clinging to his pale face extremely obvious. He was blinking a lot, and when he finally reached Tony, he let the shield fall and hit the street with a clatter—to be honest, he looked like he wanted to join it.

Tony watched all of them for another moment as they watched him. The silence was overwhelming.

“So,” Tony finally said, and everyone looked at him with a mixture of exhaustion and relief. “Dinner?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
